I do an open format radio show on Radio Regent online out of Regent Park in Toronto every Friday from 5 p.m. til 7,called CORBY's ORBIT playing everymusic, so far no Death Metal or light opera but who knows?http://www.radioregent.com/
Illustration by John Kricfalusi

Sunday, March 26, 2017

By 1998, Alanis Morissette had already conquered the world with her fevered voice and her lyrical encouragement for a socially bewildered audience to take confidence in their own self-worth. After a sabbatical in India, she came back with Thank U, a trance-y three chord manifesto of honesty, co-written with producer Glen Ballard, that confirmed her spiritual rigor and her passion for self-revelation. The music repeatedly resolves to the awkward fourth chord, always leaving a need to move forward to a resolution that never fully arrives. The words are personal and universal simultaneously, invoking a refusal to accept easy answers and self indulgence as solutions to emptiness. Her work set the stage for the uncompromising stance of rebel Canadians Avril Lavigne, Tegan & Sara and The New Pornograhers' Neko Case.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Many of Toronto's most very important Folks brought solidarity to the Tranzac Club on the first day of spring, to celebrate the efforts of Romero House, and to help them to recover from some recent water damage. Romero House is a west-end Toronto community that welcomes and befriends immigrant families and refugees. Ben Plotnick and Kevin Barrett, folk musicians and activists, organized some hella talented acquaintances to raise money - and the roof - with a spirited night of song that succeeded in packing about two hundred supporters into the Tranzac Main Hall.

Sarah Jane Scouten gets up close and personable with parade master Ben Plotnick.

Jaron Freeman-Fox opened the show with bombastic aplomb, and Kristine Schmitt held an impromptu rehearsal in the front room with John Showman and the acoustic elite of The Dot before her set.

Rebecca Campbell led a folk foray with master bassist Ian De Sousa and co-organizer Kevin Barrett on guitar.

Locals from The Local, Chris Coole and Ivan Rosenberg finally subdued the percolations of the crowd with an Appalachian edition of Stage Fright and a hard times song dedicated to Toronto musicians.

NUA entranced and excited the audience with tightly arranged nu-celtic music and microtonal drumming.

Queen of the Southern Cross Room, Abigail Lapell, on an upward arc with a successful new record, hushed the audience and encouraged a singalong on a brand new song. Quique Escamilla, The Foggy Hogtown Boys and The Slocan Ramblers brought it all home as the night rolled on. A folk festival`s worth of music ringing in spring and hope for an exemplary community.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Burton Cummings and The Guess Who were at the top of the American charts in 1970 with American Woman. The next single they released, Share The Land, consolidated their counter-culture stature even further. The contrast between the minor key verse, urging a drug-addled second person to awaken from their own self interest, with the Utopian chorale that hooks the sentiments of Woodstock to a churchy faith in communalism sold the song, although it reached a smaller audience than American Woman. Randy Bachman had just left the band and his sturdy presence is lacking in the mix. Another prototypical anthem from outside the paradigms of American songwriting.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Gordon Lightfoot gets well-deserved acclaim for his strong suits in classic Canadiana (The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald & Canadian Railroad Trilogy), his love songs (If You Could Read My Mind & Pussywillows, Cattails) and his enduring bar-band standards (Sundown & Early Morning Rain), but the power of his scathing, percussive hit, Black Day In July, remains unique Strongly stung by the intensity and proximity of the 1967 Detroit riots, which lasted five days and caused unprecedented death and destruction, Lightfoot voiced the growing frustration that was igniting songwriters all over the free world as racism, poverty and the Tet offensive dominated the media. The song tracked strongly in Canada and the U.S., until it was pulled from airplay after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.Its poetry is steeped in the blood and anger of Detroit, but continues to ask questions of Ferguson, Paris, and whatever tragedies next week's news may have in store.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

"In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as "dazzling obscurity", "whispering silence", "teeming desert" are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions... Music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them. There is a verge of the mind which those things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores."~ William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience

Saturday, March 4, 2017

When I first started teaching, this was the go-to song for any singalong. All the kids knew all the lyrics, and this was the version they loved. Little Biebs and Drake, Avril & Deryk, Kardinal & Jully. Just shining for Haiti. Blessed pride and confidence prevail, specially delivered to a new day of music by K'naan.